Politics Plus

Yesterday, when I got to the computer (yes, later than usual) I had 105 emails in my inbox.  I deleted, as quickly as I could,, all that were not subscriptions … and had 20 left. That’s actually not too bad – usually I have around 80, plus or minus, and end up with just about 20, plus or minus. So the volume was not all that alarming. The content, however, was another matter. Heather Cox Richardson’s Monday night letter (which as always I read this morning – even when it comes befroe mifnight, it generally comes after I leave the computer for the day), for instance, the statement of a Trump** stooge that if there was not s definite result tonight, “it’s going to look very suspicious.” Well, yes it is, to the ignorant – whether or not their ignorance is voluntary. Besides the delays in every election, which are unavoidable and not at all suspicous, a judge in Cobb County, GA recently ordered that a substantial number of voters who had applied for and not eeceived absentee ballots (now that actually does look suspicious) must be provided with replacement ballots and given unto November 14th to get them in (which is only fair.) And, even more disturbingly, the leader of the Wagner Group (the privately owned military company), who is a Russian oligarch, publicly took credit for interefering in US elections on a grand scale, both in 2016 and continuing, and with no intention to stop. Regardless of the truth (or lack of it) of that statement, it has a good chance of inspiring violence in people already radicalized. Well, at this point, we have done all we can (unless you are one of those Cobb County Georgia voters who got stiffed), and all we can do is brace ourselves.

Cartoon – 09 Bonaparte RTL

Short Takes –

Democratic Underground – Biden Stops Mid-Speech
Quote – Amid a crowd of hundreds watching President Joe Biden speak at a North County campaign event for Rep. Mike Levin on Thursday, Jared Smith and his handwritten sign stood out. It read: “Thank you for having a stutter.” About 20 minutes into the speech, President Biden noticed it, but couldn’t read it.
Click through for full (short) story. The poster provides a source, but I thought this was so sweet – and so telling – just as it was that I went with the DU post.

The New Yorker – Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
Quote – Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted. In this case, the failure was “particularly impressive,” since two data points would never have been enough information to generalize from. The Stanford studies became famous. Coming from a group of academics in the nineteen-seventies, the contention that people can’t think straight was shocking.
Click through for article. Not exactly news, and kind of discouraging, but something we all need to come to terms with. Except – have you ever changed your mind on a political issue, or an issue of faith? Not necessarily religious faith, but just something you strongly believed was true? I have – I wouldn’t say many times, but definitely not just once, on a variety of issues. It has tended for me to be gradual, and to require thought and analysis, and in the end generally it comes down to the fact that the belief I am discarding as erroneous has come into conflict with something else I believe more strongly. Sometimes newly learned facts have been involved – but not always.

Food For Thought